“Colette Sartor’s stories shimmer with a radiant, unsettling light. She strips away the veils that we hide behind and exposes our deepest fears and desires, revealing who we inescapably are. The stories are laced with dark humor and raw, earned emotion, and they proceed from page to page with a beautiful urgency. Her prose sings and her wounded characters linger in readers’ memories like people you’ve known, people you could have been had luck gone the other way. This is trenchant, gorgeous fiction, the voice of a writer you’ll follow anywhere, everywhere.”
—Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Remember Me Like This
“These are short stories the way they were meant to be told, from a writer who, tale after tale, proves her mastery of the form. Peopled with characters who are bracingly complex, these stories tease out the subtleties of human relationships, especially when they’ve gone awry. I was absorbed and moved from every first sentence to the last.”
—Cristina Henríquez, author of The Book of Unknown Americans
“Lordy, what a wallop each of these stories delivers-to the heart and the head, sure, but also to the conscience and the soul, not to mention to the myths of family that we embrace and to the vital lies peculiar to love that we cleave to. Equally stunning is Ms. Sartor’s command of craft-no cleverness for its own sake, no peekaboo, no ‘Look, Ma, no hands.’ Instead, with enviable humility and no little grace, she has subordinated herself to the needs, wishes, desires, and dreams of characters who have galvanized her imagination and engaged her empathy. Bravo.”
—Lee K. Abbott, author of All Things, All at Once: New and Selected Stories
“Once Removed is that rare book that succeeds on both micro and macro levels; the stories focus on the specific intimacy of individual lives yet also participate in the larger project of a whole world made of these stories-dependent on them, in fact, supported and enlarged and sustained by them. Sartor’s women suffer the internal and external scarring of the dangerous terrain they navigate: love, family, self, community. They ask uncomfortable questions, both of themselves and of the reader; it’s hugely satisfying to reach the end of the book and feel the resonant strength of the answers it proposes.”
—Antonya Nelson, author of Bound
“…Once Removed…is just stunning.”
—Jean Kwok, author of New York Times bestseller Searching for Sylvie Lee
“Lush and aching, each story is a deep dive that could be its own novel. I didn’t want this book to end.”
—Leslie Pietrzyk, author of Silver Girl
“Colette Sartor is a brilliant new addition to the literary world.”
“What’s impressive about the stories in Once Removed is that they don’t offer easy conclusions—such as ‘motherhood is a blessing,’ although some of the characters might feel that way. Others feel relief at escaping parenthood; still others recognize that the good might not outweigh the bad…These women are shedding old identities—fierce, pinpoint-focused—as they gain new ones. Sartor recognizes these decisions (consciously made or not) as opportunities for growth, which are very different from sacrifices.”
“Once Removed…shimmers with radiant, but unsettling characters in authentic situations. It’s mostly about intimacy–and I’m not talking about sex here–it’s the voids and turns of life brimming with emotional complexity. It’s about babies and meals, traditions, and customs. It’s about houses and homes; leaving and going; about love and grief, fierce natures and grudge-holders. It’s about disillusionment and estrangement.”
“[Once Removed] is like a finely tuned puzzle with interlocking pieces that keep shifting as central characters in one story turn up as background figures in another set years later. Sartor plays wonderful games with time and age, jumping back and forth decades as we meet characters in infancy only to bump into them later as sulky teenagers, or as elderly wives whose identities remain intertwined with their brazen girlhoods. The characters in this collection are tough, hurt, determined, and yearning. They rise up from the page and share their confidences like true friends. This is a dazzling debut.”
—Aimee Liu, author of Glorious Boy
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